Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	church_n	government_n	kingdom_n	3,695	5	5.8013	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42097	A sermon preached in the Cathedral Church of Durham upon the revival of the ancient laudable practice of that, and some other cathedrals, in having sermons on Wednesdays and Fridays, during Advent and Lent / by D.G. ...	Grenville, Denis, 1637-1703.	1686 (1686)	Wing G1941; ESTC R2757	16,701	34

this I recommend to the thoughts of such as believe that which to me has ever been the greatest of Paradoxes namely That obedience to an express command of our Saviour in the frequent Commemoration of his Death the greatest Respect that we can pay to the Holy Sacrament should be a means of bringing it into contempt A mighty unaccountable conceit which I cannot but admire should ever enter as I find it often does into the Heads of Men otherwise of parts and understanding but surely this fancy is no Evidence of their Parts more than of their Devotion And I do as seriously recommend to the consideration of all such as do often Participate of Christs Body and Blood the necessity of approaching there with due Care Reverence and Devotion and their obligation to live so exemplarily and suitably to so great an Honour and Priviledg as may remove these Stumbling-Blocks which have been by prophane or careless Christians laid in the way of Men who have sometimes perhaps without ill meaning not only talk'd but writ and sometimes possibly Preach'd against frequent Communion to their own Discredit as well as Dishonour to the Sacrament The chief reason of this distinct and particular Address to you the Citizens and Inhabitants living nigh the Cathedral is because it was not possible for me in the compass of the time allotted for my Discourse in the Pulpit to comprehend all those things that were requisite to be touch'd on at the restoring so Antient a Custom after so long a Revolution of time And for the ensuing Discourse the plainness and familiarity of it will I hope evince that there was no other intent in committing it to the Press but only to do good to such Readers as that Method and Stile is most proper and suitable to And for the sake of that honest design of promoting your Spiritual welfare I hope you will pardon the Prolixity of both and kindly accept of the Christian intentions and pains I have taken in this or any other part of my Ministerial Office of late or heretofore I shall lay before you at present no more Arguments to convince you how great your Obligation is to continue your Diligence in repairing to Service and Sermon on the appointed days and I wish I could live to have the like occasion to praise you for increasing that diligence in your attendance upon the Sacrament in your proper persons when you have no just impediment and taking care that there may be some Representative of your Family when you have contenting my self with the honest motives which I have already used and leaving the further success to God A SERMON PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF DURHAM ON DECEMBER the 2d 1685. Being the first Wednesday in Advent ROM XIII 11. And that knowing the time c. unto the end of the c. THE late Restauration of the weekly Sacrament in this and other Cathedrals may very well be attended on by the present Religious and laudable Custom which we are now reviving i. e. Sermons twice a Week on Wednesdays and Fridays during Advent and Lent That the Instruction from the Pulpit may be proportionable to the Devotion of those Seasons which ought among all good Christians to be extraordinary they being peculiarly destined by the Church to works of Piety and very particularly to the exercises of Repentance to dispose and fit us for the due Celebration of those great and high Festivities our Saviours Birth and Resurrection which our Holy Mother does warn us not to rush on with so little care as we do on ordinary Festivals by assigning to the one Four and to the other no less than Six weeks preparation An holy practice which was in use in this very Cathedral and it is not difficult to prove in many others before the Rebellion of Forty one and hath been observed in the Metropolitical Church of York ever since the Restoration If all Religious and Commendable Customs which the Church did once enjoy and still wishes for were not immediatly restored after so dismal a time of Violence Sacriledge and Confusion it ought to be no great matter of Admiration It may rather afford some cause of wonder that for the first Twenty years there should be made any Progress at all towards restoring such good Customs whereof some men could hardly endure the very name 'T was well that we could be permitted at first to injoy a Christmas without an Advent and an Easter without a Lent the Holy Festivals themselves without the seasons allotted for preparation When the Holy Sacrament had not been administred in most places for Fifteen years together it ought to be esteemed a mighty matter to have it Administred once a Month in a Cathedral And when the generality had expunged out of their Calendar the very titles of our highest Festivals and trained up their Children in that evil way it could not but be difficult to perswade people to embrace any thing that related unto them But Blessed be the name of the Eternal God these two or three last years have not only produced an advantagious Revolution for all Christendome which should fill all the Churches thereof with Te Deums but particularly for our own Church and Kingdom by frustrating those fears and jealousies which had almost intoxicated the Nation and did occasion that terrible Rebellion which nothing less than the goodness of God and Conduct of such a Prince could so happily have suppressed nay by raising in some Respects our established Government and Religion when some apprehended we should have lost both Insomuch that I 'le make bold to say and deliver my Conscience It is like to be the fault of the People rather than the Prince if both do not flourish more than they have done in former Ages For if God gives us the Grace according to the liberty granted us by an Indulgent Soveraign to live up to the height of our establish'd Religion in such sort that it may once appear with due Lustre Priests becoming generally Exemplary for Holiness and diligent in their Office by keeping close to the Rules of the Common Prayer Book and above all laying out their endeavours in training up the young generation in such sound Principles of Loyalty and Religion as to give at last an infallible demonstration That an exact obedience to our Mother is the surest and most expeditious course to produce the best Christians and best Subjects we may be by Gods Blessing fixed on so sure a foundation as that none of our Adversaries on either hand will be able either to undermine or overthrow us A Digression but very necessary to obviate that Hereditary Disease of the People of England which God deliver us from an aptitude not only to entertain but to augment Fears and Jealousies and to Torment themselves and disturb the World with them when they have little and sometimes no Cause at all as much as when they have a great One Our two most Reverend

least interruption their whole Life indeed being but one intire act of sleep I shall rather enquire within the Church among Professors of our own Religion for some of those sleepers my Text aims at where it is notorious we may find too great a number who can thus sleep even at Noon-day resist the force of the Gospel the most powerful methods to reduce sinners nay become daily worse men more and more vile lewd and stupid to the reproach of Christianity in the very midst of the Glorious Light of the most purely Reformed Church in the whole World in point of Doctrine Discipline and Worship 'T is certain every unregenerate Man every impenitent Sinner whosoever is under the power of any Lust of Flesh or Spirit every one that is not awakened into so serious a sense of his Duty as sincerely and faithfully to oppose sin and to pursue vertue faithfully using the means which God affords him to mortify his corrupt Nature whereof a devout respect to this season of Advent may be an especial one and to revive and strengthen Grace in his Soul is I say such a Sleeper a sound sleeper in sin and security even upon the very brink of Destruction a Sleeper that ought to be awakened and warned of his danger And if nothing else will do it I beseech God to rouse him up by the Thunder of his Spirit and to drag him to repentance by the terrors of his Judgments if he will by no means be drawn by the Cords of his Love And here I must more particularly apply my self to such a sinner by considering him under a double capacity either as an old hardned sinner or a young Proficient in vice as one that hath been from his youth to the hoary head habituated to a course of Sin and Impiety or else as one that is newly entred into those ways that lead to the Chambers of Death and ready to sacrifice to the Devil the very prime and flower of his youth And here the old Man is first obliged to awake from sleep and rouse himself up out of his Impenitency He who has one foot already in the Grave should greedily catch at so fair an occasion and lay hold on that eternal Life which is yet notwithstanding all his past provocations graciously offered him And faithfully and wisely imploy and improve these few last minutes in Devotion and the exercises of Repentance remembring that he is just ready to launch forth into the Ocean of Eternity And that upon the right use of the last Hours his everlasting happiness doth depend and that that one hour spent as it ought here in this World may secure that for him which hereafter he cannot do unto all Eternity As the Tree falls let us seasonably consider so it lies And The Grave which is in a manner ready open to receive the old Man is no place for Repentance The hoary Head which is a Crown of Glory when it is found in the way of Righteousness and a mighty Aggravation of sin when it is met with in the way of vice ought to be a serious Monitor and doth loudly call upon old men to Repent Let them remember that they must repent now or never their youth their middle Age is gone and their last days only remain which it infinitely concerns them to manage well having spent the rest or else they must perish in sin and wickedness and their Ruin will be inevitable As they have been laden with sin and iniquity in this life let them assure themselves that without a speedy and hearty Conversion unto God they will in the other World be certainly laden with punishment Let them above others take care how they sleep any longer lest they awake no more If they resist this present Call their Ears may never hear another Death they may assure themselves how far soever the young man puts the evil days from him is near them even at the very door and so is Judgement likewise both which ought to strike them with all their Terrors If this does not suffice to awaken the old man dead in Trespasses and Sins I shall only mind him That he above all others ought to have the sound of the last Trump always in his Ears surgite mortui arise ye dead The young man in the heat of his youth and the midst of all his extravagance has sundry and great obligations to improve this season to reform his Life and enter into the ways of Wisdom which as the Wise Man tells us are ways of pleasantness and paths of peace As the old Man must dye so let me be his Monitor That he may dye and be hurried away to Hell in the midst of his sins many sad and lamentable examples whereof God sets daily before our eyes Let the young man know that tho' he rejoice in his youth and his heart cheer him in the days of his youth and he walk in the ways of his heart and in the sight of his eyes that for all these things God will bring him into Judgement As the Taper of an old Man is expiring by the course of Nature so is that of the young man as liable violently to be puft out As the one vanisheth so is the other often driven off the Stage of this World And the number of those that are suddenly snatched away in the midst of their heady and unadvised Courses do far exceed those who finish their Course and arrive to the usual Age of Man to David's Threescore years and Ten. Besides these and many more discouragements to be wicked common to youth in the Age of Giddiness and Sin while their natural Lusts and Corruptions are predominant There are as many and great Invitations to Goodness and Vertue and to remember their Creator in the days of their youth Nothing doth so indear us to God as early Piety As there is nothing more offensive to him and more preposterous in it self than to spend the Candle of our youth our Health and Strength in the Service of the Devil and to put at last the very Snuff upon Gods Altar St. John attained the Name of the Beloved Disciple and had the Honour to lean in the very Bosom of his Saviour because he gave to God the first-fruits of his strength and younger years and dedicated to his Redeemer the faculties of his Soul as well as the Members of his Body while they were untainted and undefiled by sin No worse Reception might the youth of this or any Age have with the Saviour of the World the Fountain of all Goodness the Author of all Blessings if they would but seasonably break off from the Chains of their Corrupt Nature and youthful Lusts the very bands of Satan and original of all their Misery and devote themselves to his Service which is perfect freedom here in this Life and whose enjoyment in the Life to come is accompanied with fulness of Joy and Pleasures for evermore Having dispatch'd what I propounded